Soon we’ll be by the sea again.
Like pilgrims we come each year, my wife and her son and my daughters and I. It’s a family tradition for our sometimes-family. Each summer, for a week, for seven days to which our coming gives a shape, we live together by the sea, giving to our oddly separate yet intertwined lives a shape. A family we are, here to have fun, before saying goodbye to the waves and the summer and each other: Jaime going back to his father in New Jersey; Mara and Sara going back to their mother in the mountains; Norma and I going back to an unencumbered life which full-time parents sometimes envy, but not as much as we envy theirs.
